Word
Gems
What is a
man but the sum of his thoughts?
- Mortimer Adler's
- Syntopicon
Essays
Man:
Editor's
1-minute essay
- "What a piece of work is a man! how
noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world!
the paragon of animals!"
-
In what may be the most eloquent expression of the traditional view of humankind,
Shakespeare's Hamlet, above, sings the glories of man.
This estimation, one assented to among those who may have agreed upon little else,
represents the vast majority opinion in the West concerning man and his nature -- from the
time of the Greeks to the 19th century.
The line of demarcation in this history of thought highlights, of course, the
coming of Darwin's paradigm-altering writings and their ensuing fallout.
Darwin, in the spirit of Alfred North Whitehead's comment that "the argument
on any basic issue is never closed," was impolite enough to shake and jostle notions
held dear for thousands of years.
And man's conception of man still reels from the questions he forced upon us:
- Is man different from the animals in kind --
radically, deeply, essentially different in kind -- or are these differences only apparent
and not real, merely ones of degree?
- Is man the only rational animal? or just more
intelligent? Are there unbridgeable chasms between man and the other animals? or is there
a seamless continuity among all life-forms?
Other than the question of God's existence, the issues concerning the nature of
man, Dr. Adler asserts, may be the most serious and far-reaching in their consequences of
any problem facing us.
In the satirical novel, You Shall Know Them, a certain rascal discovers a
race of creatures who look like apes but act like humans. He then proceeds to father a
child with one of their females. Upon the birth of the infant, shockingly, he kills the
child -- but then presents himself to the police.
But has he committed a crime? Is this murder? Murder involves the slaying of a human
being!
What does it mean to be human? As Dr. Adler reminds us, this is a most
serious question.
Traditionally, we in the West have ascribed an august dignity to what we call personhood;
it is the dignity of end in itself; that is, no man or woman exists,
fundamentally, for the pleasure of another -- no person is to be considered merely a means
to some other good. This, in its deepest essence, is the unspoken message of Jefferson's
"all men are created equal" -- that is, all men and women are persons
-- and there is no such thing as "some are a little more human than others"!
Man's exclusive dignity -- as man, set apart from all other life forms --
is deeply and profoundly enshrined in the West's most cherished political and religious
doctrines.
- Keeping all of this in mind, Adler admonishes us to ponder
very carefully the claims of Darwin, his world-shattering, radical assertion in The
Descent of Man: "The difference in mind between men and the higher animals --
great as it is -- certainly is one of degree and not of kind."
Consider the logical implications of this statement:
- if his claim is true, it means that we are only "just a
little bit more human" than the higher animals; it means that Hitler was right, that
there might, indeed, be "inferior" races of men (as there are "lower"
animals), and, if this is the case, lacking any special dignity, these inferiors are
"open game" to be exploited by the strong; it means that we must change our
thinking regarding the status of animals -- how we use and treat them -- as our
present laws must now be regarded as unjust if our chimp and ape brethren's claim to
dignity is as strong as our own.
In all of this, Adler insists and pounds the point that the essential issue, the
central question, of Darwin's claim becomes:
- Does man differ from the animals in kind or merely degree?
While this topic naturally invites much discussion, since this writing purports to
be a "1-minute essay," I shall quickly move near to the bottom line by offering
one of Adler's conclusions:
- One hundred years of research most strongly suggests -- the
evidence is overwhelming -- that, in terms of anatomy, man differs from the
animals only in degree! We are not that much different from them -- there is an
underlying biological continuity in nature which cannot reasonably be denied!
[Editor's special note: see the writings, Genesis and the Big Bang and The
Science of God, of M.I.T. nuclear physicist and Hebrew scholar, Dr. Gerald
Schroeder.]
- However, in terms of mental powers -- the
difference between man and animals is uniquely, deeply, and radically one of kind
-- so much so, that it goes not too far to say that man is the only rational animal --
that the other animals are not rational at all!
Concerning anatomical differences, as the evidence is overabundant for
the above position, nothing more will be added here, and the reader is directed to other
sources, for example, Dr. Schroeder's works.
However, the issue of human mind versus animal brain is more subtle in
nature and not so easily set aside. Darwin, too, in the third and fourth chapters of The
Descent of Man, acknowledges that the arena of the mind, not bodily differences,
would prove to be the greatest challenge to his theory.
In the last one hundred years, a great deal of research has been conducted
demonstrating the similarities between man and animals:
- There is the famous experiment of the chimp in the cage trying to snatch high
out-of-reach bananas; the chimp deftly solves the problem by vertically stacking several
boxes, climbing them, and retrieving his meal.
- Apes have been taught to recognize a large corpus of words; and, in their own way,
these higher primates are able to employ this vocabulary to communicate certain things to
their human teachers.
- In another famous experiment involving the use of tools, a caged chimp, gazing at a
bunch of bananas, just beyond his grasp outside his cage, smartly notices that two bamboo
sticks at his disposal could be inserted, one into another, and, thereby, now, with a
longer reach, snags his prize.
- Many animals display great skill -- some say, artistic ability -- in the building
of nests, dams, hives, webs, and similar items.
- Many animals congregate in vast and intricate hierarchies, groupings, and
associations -- displaying a sophisticated social sense and gregariousness.
Experimental animal psychology offers to us many other fascinating insights into
the marvels of the animal world.
The question before us, however, is what does all of this mean? Do these
animal wonders constitute evidence that our furry and feathered friends are only "a
little less human" than ourselves?
Adler, with characteristic insight, begins to answer this question in two ways:
(1) The above "animal wonders," while marvelous, upon closer inspection,
reveal to us nothing that threatens man's radically and unbridgeably superior mind
vis-a-vis the animals.
Regarding animal intelligence, some will say: "Look at how they solve
problems! How intelligent they are!" True enough -- they are very
intelligent; and in their problem-solving episodes, clearly, they demonstrate a measure of
mental prowess.
But Adler points out that there is something wrong with this picture. While some
animals have the brain-power to solve simple problems, all such heuristic activity is
quite one-dimensional in character:
- all animal thinking takes place within the short
compass of problem-solving; all animal problem-solving serves the urgent
and never the merely important; all animal problem-solving speaks to the
satisfying of immediate biological needs.
Higher-primate vocabulary, extending to scores or even a few hundred terms,
centers upon
- words of emotional outcry and need; of pleasure and pain; of
outrage, sex, and hunger -- but never one word of abstract thought.
The bird's nest, the beaver's dam, and many other examples, demonstrate an
extremely high proficiency in producing various items -- in many cases, the skill
demonstrated goes beyond that of human ability.
But,
- the sparrow's nest and the Canadian beaver's dam of today
are exactly the same as those produced by their counterparts of one thousand years ago;
there is no variation, no improvement, and no deviation from the designs mandated by
primordial instinct.
Animal-world hierarchies, groupings, and associations are legendary. Wise Solomon
was smitten (Proverbs 6) by the ants' ability to work in unison despite their legion-like
numbers.
But, again,
- try to suggest to these creatures a different mode
of working; try to train them to work a 10-hour, 4-day week -- with every other weekend
off!
In all of these examples concerning our animal friends, their greatest strengths,
fantastic as they are, prove to be their greatest weaknesses:
- they can never surmount and grow beyond their own
innate, instinctual taskmasters.
(2) Adler summarizes the above with three principles, examples of mental activity
that man -- and man alone -- engages in; and, in these activities, we find hard
evidence for the flat dogmatic assertion that man -- and man alone -- in a very
real and substantive sense, is a rational being:
- Only man makes artistically: while the spider's
web and the bee's hive remain spectacular engineering feats, only man grows in
his ability to create and produce -- he plans imaginatively, he changes, he revises, he
discards and starts something new. Man, in his making of things, is driven not by mechanical
instinct but -- godlike -- is inspired by the hidden well-spring of his own creative
energies. It must be made clear that all so-called animal "art" takes place
within their attempts to solve some particular survival problem; contrariwise, only
man is a fine artist, only man produces things simply for the sheer enjoyment of them
without one thought of utilitarian benefit. We are here reminded of Archibald McLeish's
"A poem should not mean but be."
- Only man speaks discursively: apes, at best,
speak in choppy, punctuated, surging discharges expressing immediate emotional need; man,
if he so chooses, speaks syntactically, in whole thoughts -- in abstract thoughts,
contemplating mathematics, time, the universe, life, and, most enigmatically, his own self
and being.
- Only man associates politically: only man is a
political animal; he chooses -- and regularly changes -- the rules and laws under
which he lives and creates society. And only man possesses history, a sense of a
cultural transmission of an ever-changing accumulation of ideas and institutions; further,
only man can choose to regress -- he may live in the gutter if he so desires; but
animals, more or less, all reside in the "same neighborhood."
All of this suggests -- a great deal more than merely suggests -- that man is a
rational animal -- and the only rational animal; and it is in this area of
mind, not body, that constitutes the unbridgeable gap between ourselves and the
animal world -- a deep-rift division of kind and not merely one of degree.
Darwin, Adler posits, was partly right, and partly wrong. It is important to
understand where he went wrong; because the furtherance of Darwin's error makes a mockery
of the most cherished principles of Western Civilization --
- the high dignity of humankind, Shakespeare's "beauty of
the world," Aquinas' image and son of God, Protagorus' "the measure of all
things."
Simply stated,
- many in our society live an intellectually schizoid life: we
cannot affirm all that Darwin taught -- while also preaching the doctrine of the
exclusive sanctity of human life.
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